The posterior parietal cortex is implicated in attentional selection. In the present study we used fMRI to examine the role of posterior parietal cortex in selection based on the saliency of target and distractor information. Hierarchical stimuli were presented to participants and the task (respond to local or global) was crossed with the saliency of the target level (local salient, global salient). We found unique activation in the left posterior parietal cortex and the left lateral occipital complex for conditions where the less salient level had to be selected irrespective if this was the local or the global stimulus. In addition, ROI analysis revealed a positive correlation between the differences in BOLD signal change in left posterior parietal cortex for responses to low, relative to high, saliency targets and RT cost for low salient targets in reaction times. The highest percent signal change was in the left inferior parietal region for those conditions in which the less salient target level had to be selected. In contrast, there was no evidence for lateralised activity for selection based on the level of processing. The data suggest a specific role for the left inferior parietal lobule in salience-based selection.